Michael Blakemore [2013]: Stage Blood. (London, UK: Faber & Faber). A riveting account of Blakemore’s time at the National Theatre in London.

William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac [1945/2008]: And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks. (London, UK: Penguin Classics). Mostly writing alternate chapters, this is a fictional account of events based on the death of David Kammerer at the hands of Lucien Carr.

Charles McCarry [1974]: The Tears of Autumn. (London, UK: Duckworth Overlook, 2009). The assassination of JFK as a conspiracy organized by the family of the Diem brothers, involving Cuban military officials, the KGB, and the Mafia.

John Williams [1965]: Stoner. (London, UK: Vintage, 2012). Alerted by the enthusiasm of the late Norman Geras, and reinforced by the praise of Julian Barnes, I starting reading this book with keen anticipation. I should have known better: someone who liked the books of Philip Roth clearly had a literary taste to be wary of. Stoner was a great disappointment, and certainly does not belong in any collection of Great American Novels.

Is the book great literature? Well, frankly, no. It is well-written, no question, but not well enough. We are told the main character William Stoner has no friends while an undergraduate, but nothing in the thin preceeding pages would explain why. We are told he switches from studying agriculture to literature after an epiphany in a compulsory literature class, but this paragraph (and it is just a paragraph) is very thin indeed. Why did he have this epiphany? Where did it come from? Nothing beforehand (in the book) would justify this event, and the event itself is only barely described. Do people make such a switch so often, that no explanation is needed? Not in my experience.

I can see that members of the literati – for instance, Julian Barnes – would like to read about people who come to love literature and who then devote their life to its teaching. But Williams merely states these attributes of William Stoner as facts, without providing any compelling justification – not psychological, nor social, nor familial, nor cultural, nor literary, not spiritual, nor nothing – for these facts. Indeed, there is hardly any justification at all, let alone a compelling one.

The narration is by a third-person narrator, and he or she seems to know what is inside Dr Stoner’s head. Moreover, every other character is a cypher to the narrator, as (presumably) they are to Stoner himself. One is therefore tempted to read the narration as being in the first-person. But then, some of it is too vague for either a knowledgeable first-person or an omniscient third: on pager 109, for instance, we read that Stoner disposed of his $2000 inheritance by giving “a few hundred dollars” to his parents’ black farm worker. A few hundred? Surely, Stoner knew at the time exactly how much he gave. Likewise, surely, an omniscient narrator would also know the amount. This is sloppy writing, and it undermines the case for the narrator being either first- or an omniscient third-person.

Similarly, we are told several times that Stoner had a deep friendship with Dave Masters, who is killed in the Great War. But although this friendship is mentioned, it is not described in any depth. It is certainly not invoked, nor is an invocation even attempted. So, again, we come away thinking the narrator barely knows about which he speaks. Just how credible, then, is anything the narrator says? The book undermines its own case.

Why has the book proven popular? Well it is more popular in Europe than in America. I believe the answer to this disparity goes to something the former British Labour MP, Bryan Gould, once said when comparing political life in Europe with that in Australia, New Zealand, or North America: In the New World, anyone upset by a social problem tries to fix it. In the Old World, anyone upset by a social problem tries to live with it. Stoner is a book about a man who lives with every major problem of his life, accommodating himself to an unhappy marriage, to a wife who appears on the edge of madness, to the end of his only happy relationship, to an alcoholic daughter, to not seeing his only grandchild, to an unsatisfying and tedious job, to an unfair assignment of work duties, to no promotions, to a lack of close friendships, to public gossip and innuendo about his marriage and relationships, to the death of his parents and his one apparently-close friend, while only ever once, it seems, standing up for himself. And the counter-attack he launches is in such a small and picayune way, hurting the very students he is supposed to care for, that it can hardly be worthy of any emulation.

Certainly such people exist (indeed, the Old World is full of them), but this novel never presents a compelling case that this particular man, William Stoner, should behave in this way. Indeed, it hardly presents any case at all – the writing is all tell, and no show. The power of showing is demonstrated by the one scene where the author does invoke the events, rather than merely mentioning them: the PhD upgrade viva of Charles Walker, where we can read the dialog for ourselves, and draw our own conclusions. If only the author had done this more often, the book would have been much better.

Having created lists of concerts I have attended, bands I have heard, galleries I have visited, etc, I overlooked theatre and dance productions I have seen. Herewith a list, sometimes annotated, to be updated as and when I remember additional events.

Henry V by Cyphers Theatre Company at The Proud Achivist, on Sunday 25 October 2015, the 600th Anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. Directed by Marcus Bazley, and starring Paul Anthony, Carmella Brown, William Holyhead, Dylan Lincoln, Rupert Sadler and Louise Wilcox. As before, this is an exciting and energetic production, and was again superbly acted. One had to fight hard to ignore the leaking sound of the fine ragtime and blues pianist in the bar outside.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, at Tutu’s, King’s College London, 23-25 March 2015, directed by Luke James Boneham, and starring Joe Prestwich, Grace Farrell, Ally McDermott, Rosalia Mythos-Perris, Tom Marsh, Ben Dallyn, Emily Brown, Travis Alabanza, George Collecott, Akshay Sharan, Ioana Andrei, Aurelie Blanc and Jackie Edwards. This was a very good production. I particularly liked the detailed choreography of fast-paced, witty movement in the scene where Lysander (Tom Marsh) and Demetrius (Ben Dallyn) were both besotted with Helena (Emily Brown). Not sure if this choreography was planned and directed or was improvised by the actors – in either case, it was very good.

Proof, a play David Auburn, at Tutu’s, King’s College London, March 2015, directed by Mathew Hodson and supported by the Faculty of Natural and Mathematical Sciences of King’s College London.

Heels of Glory: A Drag Action Musical, by Tricity Vogue (writer) and Richard Link (composer), directed by Stephen Heatley, at Chelsea Theatre, London, January 2015. Some good music, and the henchpersons were choreographed well. But lyrics and words and comedy and plot and singing and acting and lighting could all do with some more work. OTOH, perhaps best to ignore my comments, as I’ve never really got drag.

Great Britain, National Theatre production of play by Richard Bean, directed by Nicholas Hytner, at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 29 December 2014. I lasted just the first half, and would have left earlier if I could have done so without disturbing anyone. Not at all funny – there were perhaps just three mildly-amusing one-liners, none of them particularly witty or satirical, in the first half. Lots of swearing and explicit sexual innuendo (both verbal and physical), which I assume was intended to be funny. But who laughs at swear words and extreme male chauvinist displays of sexist insults these days? Who ever did, come to that? (In my entire life, I have never met anyone who laughed at Benny Hill, for instance, which may only show what sheltered upbringings modern Australians have.)The script had the feel of something written by someone in late middle age, trying his hardest to be down and dirty with the kids – and missing it completely. As an example: Why was the Police Commissioner’s secret gay lover half-Chinese and half-Welsh? I imagine such specific detail was intended to be funny. But it wasn’t funny, and no one laughed at it. Nothing was done with this detail (at least in the first half), so why was it there at all? It was as funny as saying he was half-Welsh and an architect, ie, not at all. Perhaps it would be funny to people who don’t know any Chinese people or any Welsh people, or people who don’t live in modern Britain. Perhaps Benny Hill would have found it funny.The actors did their best with a script that should have gone straight from paper factory to wrapping fish-and-chips. I have known a dozen people wittier everyday, all the time, than anything I heard here, and encounter similar people frequently. The average stranger in a British post office queue is funnier. And they do not have the luxury of writing their words in advance.Perhaps the play was funnier on another night, the night the critics went. Or perhaps I just wasn’t in the target demographic, since I was expecting to see clever political satire and sharp wit, rather than f-words, unfunny d-jokes, and stale, ham-fisted political commentary. However, no one around me was laughing either, so there must have been a lot of us from that wrong demographic there.

Romeo and Juliet, by London Theatre Workshop, The Eel Brook, Fulham. Audience only a few more than cast, sadly. Some inspired performances, but felt like the troupe were still finding their feet with the play. Perhaps would have been better later in the run. Hard to discern what this production was for. Why another production of R&J? Why now? Why this way? A lot of knives, unnerving to those of us awake in the front row.

Henry V, at The Proud Achivist, October 2014, in a co-production of Cyphers Theatre Company and King’s Shakespeare Company, directed by Marcus Bazley, and starring Chris Anderton, Victoria Hamblen, William Holyhead, Dylan Lincoln, and Rupert Sadler. This was a very impressive production, of high professional standard. Who wouldn’t want to be an actor, when you get to run around in public like this, shouting and fighting? A superb production, fast-paced, clever, and witty. All the sound effects – seagulls, sailing ships, war drums, swells – were produced by the actors themselves, and transported us instantly. The costumes were cleverly and subtly colour-coded so that we could tell French from English characters played by doubling actors. Some nice public participation, such as asking audience members to donate coins for the welfare of incognito Henry’s soldier challenger. And some clever improv by Will Holyhead when an audience member handed him a kangaroo-laden Australian dollar coin. Who wouldn’t want to be an actor, when you get to engage in banter like this?

Blackshaw Theatre New Writing Night, 30 September 2014, Horse and Stables Pub, Waterloo, London. Five very good items tonight, especially Luca Vigano’s short play about a hit-man commissioned to kill his client, Slice of Death, directed by Stephen Bailey and starring Annie McKenzie and Oscar Porter Brentford.

Teh Internet is Serious Business, play about Anonymous and LulzSec by Tim Price, at the Royal Court Theatre downstairs, Sloane Square, London, 23 September 2014 (press night). I recommend the play very highly. As someone remarked afterwards, there can be few plays around that present C++ code through the medium of interpretative dance. The play is fast, kaleidoscopic, witty, and visceral, and some scenes are very funny. I think there are many possible explanations for the actions and evolution of Anonymous, and the play essentially presents just one narrative. The one it presents is plausible, however. It is also good in capturing the specific personalities and motivations of some of the LulzSec members, particularly Tflow and Topiary.

Solo for Two, Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev, London Coliseum, London, August 2014.

Blackshaw Theatre New Writing Night, 29 July 2014, Horse and Stables Pub, Waterloo, London. Of the events featured this night, only Gravy, written by Harold Kimmel and directed by Christian Durham, was worth writing home about: this presented a very funny NYPD investigation of the crime scene that ends Hamlet, with the Ghost and Horatio called in for questioning over the multiple murders, incest, and various perversions discovered.

Gulf, performed by Pivot Theatre Company, written by Jeff Scott and Alister MacQuarrie, directed by Charlie Kenber with music by Patrick Sale, at Camden People’s Theatre, London, July 2014. The play explored relationships between a mother and her teenage daughter, the daughter and her school headmaster, the mother and her colleagues and a psychiatrist, and issues of pedophilia, teenage sex, and the internet. I found the play confusing, especially with actors switching roles apparently randomly, and lots of scenes made no clear sense. Perhaps the play was about too many issues and too many relationships to be adequately covered in the time. I liked the music, as music, but not sure it worked with the play.

Measure for Measure in Cabaret, by King’s Shakespeare Company, directed by Lauren O’Hara and music by Henry Keynes Carpenter, final dress rehearsal, London, July 2014, prior to participation in the Bristol BardFest.

London Student Drama Festival 2014, Teatro Technis, Camden, London, 21 June 2014. Five short plays: 12″; Honestly (both Imperial College); The Parting Glass (UCL); Lizards (SOAS); Guilty Parties (KCL). Best by far was the KCL entry, very funny and well acted, written by Alister MacQuarrie, who rightly won Best Writer award for second year running. SOAS entry was workshopped and showed it; could have done with more work. UCL play was an Oirish drama about The Troubles – oh so serious, so overdone, its conclusions telegraphed ahead of time, with melodramatic acting, cod accents, two anti-minimalist sets leaving nothing to our imaginations, an upright piano, and enough actors for a Cecil B. De Mille epic, including even a 5-person Celtic band on stage: Holy Mother of Mercy was this awful! For reasons unknown, this insult to those of us of Irish descent won award for best entry. And speaking as indeed such a person, why must any Irish drama be accompanied by Celtic folk music, as if Irish people can’t appreciate any other type of music? Has no one heard of John Field, James Galway, or the Vanbrugh Quartet? Even The Messiah had its first performance in Dublin! Five centuries of English condescension towards Ireland embodied in one folk band onstage tonight.

Another Country, by Julian Mitchell, directed by Jeremy Herrin, at Trafalgar Studios, Whitehall, London, June 2014. A superb production of a play which imagines what events in an English public school in the 1920s might have led the Cambridge 5 to betray their country. Rob Callender superb as the young Guy Burgess: authentic, spirited, leopardesque, riveting.

Trojan Barbie, by Christine Evans, by the King’s Players, King’s College London, under Holly Robinson (director) and Dan Bird (producer), in Tutu’s, KCLSU, Temple, London, March 2014. Without question, one of the worst live performances I have had the misfortune to witness.

Copenhagen, by Michael Frayn, performed by Ria Abbott (Margrethe Bohr), Freddie Fullerton (Niels Bohr) and Tom Marsh (Werner Heisenberg), under Alister MacQuarrie (director), Aja Garrod (producer), and William Nash (executive producer) in the Old Anatomy Museum, King’s College London, Strand, March 2014. Superbly acted and directed, this was theatre of a high professional standard, equal to any I have seen. Another review is here.

Romeo and Juliet, by King’s College London English Literary Society, under W. Nash (director), at the Greenwood Theatre, London, February 2014. An innovative, witty, and funny treatment, superbly acted.

The Tempest, by King’s Shakespeare Company, under Hannah Elsy (director) and Aja Garrod (producer), at The Rag Factory, Heneage Street, Brick Lane, London, December 2013. Outstanding performances by Imogen Free (Ariel) and Max Funcheon-Dinnen (Stephano). The modern touches worked very well, and brought the play alive. Was a full house.

The Magic Flute, by English National Opera, directed by Simon McBurney, London, December 2013. As always with this director, there were some stunning visual effects, for instance, the shoals of actors representing birds, each fluttering folded paper to produce a rustling sound.

Anita Raghavan [2013]: The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of the Indian-American Elite and the Fall of the Galleon Hedge Fund. (New York: Business Plus). This is a fascinating and excitingly-written account of the rise and fall of several people, many of them Americans of South Asian descent, associated with the activities of the Galleon hedge fund. First among these is billionaire Tamil-American Raj Rajaratnam, founder of Galleon, and convicted insider-trader. In the next tier are his many insider informants, primaily Rajat Gupta and Anil Kumar, both prominent partners of McKinsey and Company, a management consulting firm. Indeed, Gupta was three times elected global MD of McKinsey by his fellow partners, and thus the book has lots of fascinating information about The Firm and its operations, incidental to the main story.

Insider trading is a strange crime. Surely most traders engaged in trading for its own sake (and not hedging some activity or transaction in non-financial markets) seek to take advantage of something they know that others don’t, even if it is just knowledge arising from more clever or faster analysis, or the knowledge that comes from aggregating views across multiple trades. And who, exactly, are the victims here, since any trading requires a willing counterparty? But even if insider-trading is not considered an evil, there is great dishonour in breaching confidences gained in positions of trust, and there seems little doubt that Rajaratnam’s informants did that.

An odd feature of the book, where so many prominent Indian Americans and South-Asian businesspeople are name-checked, is the failure to mention Praful Gupta. As far as I am aware, the two Guptas were no relation, and met when they were fellow students at Harvard Business School. Rajat Gupta, in a newspaper interview in 1994, said they became and remained very good friends. While Rajat pursued a career with McKinsey, Praful became a management consultant and partner with Booz, Allen & Hamilton, and later a senior executive with Reliance Industries.

An annoying feature of the writing is the author’s repeated confusion about tense. On page 217, for instance, we read, “In 2005, Lloyd Blankfein’s predecessor and former secretary of the Treasury Henry M. “Hank” Paulson Jr. had approached Gupta about joining the Goldman board of directors.” But Hank Paulson only became Secretary of the US Treasury in 2006, where he remained until January 2009. At the time this sentence was written by Raghavan in 2012 or 2013, Paulson was a former Treasury Secretary, but not in 2005, the time referred to at the opening of the sentence. There are similar instances of inaccurate or confused tense on pages 257, 288, 347, and 362, and no doubt more that I did not catch. These appear so frequently that one is tempted to consider them not mere lapses nor evidence of a non-grammatical linguistic style, but indicative of a more fundamental difference between the author’s conceptualization of time and that of most speakers of English. There are also a number of confusions or ambiguities of subject and object, and of deictic markers, in sentences throughout the text.

Jason Matthews [2013]: Red Sparrow (New York: Simon & Schuster). A debut spy-thriller by a 33-year CIA clandestine service veteran, this book is well-written and gripping, with plot twists that are unexpected yet plausible. The book has placed the author in the same league of Le Carre and McCarry, and I recommend the book strongly. As so often with espionage and crime fiction, the main weakness is the characterization – the players are too busy doing things in the world for us to have a good sense of their personalities, especially so for the minor characters. Part of the reason for us having this sense, I think, is the sparsity of dialog through which we could infer a sense of personhood for each player. And the main character, Nate Nash, gets pushed aside in the second half of the book by the machinations of the other players. In any case, the ending of the book allows us to meet these folks again. Finally, I found the recipes which end each chapter an affectation, but that may be me. The author missed a chance for a subtle allusion with solo meal cooked by General Korchnoi, which I mis-read as pasta alla mollusc, which would have made it the same as the last meal of William Colby.

Henry A. Cumpton [2012]: The Art of Intelligence: Lessons from a Life in the CIA’s Clandestine Service.(New York: Penguin). A fascinating account of a career in espionage. Crumpton reports an early foreign assignment in the 1980s in an African country which had had a war of liberation war, where the US had a close working relationship with the revolutionary Government of the country: The only candidates that seem to fit this bill are Zimbabwe or possibly Mozambique. Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF Government was so close to the USA in its early years that the Zimbabwe Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) had only two groups dealing with counter-subversion: a group seeking to counter South African subversion and a group seeking to counter Soviet subversion. Indeed, so great was the fear of Soviet subversion that the USSR was not permitted to open an embassy in Zimbabwe for the first two years following independence in 1980.

The book has four very interesting accounts:

1. Crumpton’s perceptive reflections on the different cultures of CIA and FBI, which are summarized in this post.

2. The account of the preparations needed to design, build, deploy, and manage systems of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs, or drones) in Afghanistan. The diverse and inter-locking challenges – technical, political, strategic, managerial, economic, human, and logistic – are reminiscent of those involved in creating CIA’s U2 spy-plane program in the 1950s (whose leader Richard Bissell I saluted here).

3. The development of integrated Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for tactical anti-terrorist operations management in the early 2000s. What I find interesting is that this took place a decade after mobile telecommunications companies were using GIS for tactical planning and management of engineering and marketing operations. Why should the Government be so far behind?

4. An account of CIA’s anti-terrorist programs prior to 11 September 2011, including the monitoring and subversion of Al-Qaeda. Given the extent of these programmes, it is now clear why CIA embarked on such an activist role following 9/11. George Tenet remarked at the time (in his memoirs) that such a role would mean crossing a threshold for CIA, but until Crumpton’s book, I never understood why this enhanced role had been accepted at the time by US political leaders and military leaders. From Crumpton’s account, the reason for their acceptance was that CIA was the only security agency ready to step up quickly at the time.

Paul Vallely [2013]: Pope Francis: Untying the Knots. (London, UK: Bloomsbury). A fascinating account of the man who may revolutionize the Catholic Church. Francis, first as Fr Jorge Bergoglio SJ and then as Archbishop and Cardinal, appears to have moved from right to left as he aged, to the point where he now embraces a version of liberation theology. His role during the period of Argentina’s military junta of Jorge Videla is still unclear – he seems to have bravely hidden and help-escape leftist political refugees and activists, while at the same time, through dismissing them from Church protection, making other activitists targets of military actions.

Bergoglio seems to understand something his brother cardinals appear not to – that the Catholic Church (and other fundamentalist and evangelical Christian denominations) are not seen by the majority of people in the West any longer as places of saintliness, spiritual goodness, or charity, but as bastions of bigotry, irrationally opposed to individual freedom and to human happiness and fulfilment. In its campaigns against gay marriage rights, euthenasia, abortion, and other private moral issues, the Church opposes free will not only of its own clergy and lay members, but also of other citizens who are not even Catholic adherents. Such campaigns to limit the freedoms and rights of non-believers are presumptious, to say the least. The Catholic Church does a great deal of unremarked good in the world, work which is sullied and undermined by the political campaigns and bigoted public statements of its leaders.

The book is poorly written, with lots of repetition, and several chapters reprising the entire argument of the book, as if they had been stand-along newspaper articles. The author clearly thinks his readers have the minds of gold-fish, since interview subjects are introduced repeatedly with descriptions, as if for the first time.

The photo shows one of the demonstrations of the The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, held weekly since 1977 to protest the junta’s kidnap, torture, and murder of Argentinian citizens. We should not forget that the military regimes of South America, including the Argentinian junta of Videla, were supported not only by the Vatican and most local Catholic clergy (with some brave exceptions), but also by the US intelligence services, including during the administration of Jimmy Carter.

Igor Lukes [2012]: On the Edge of the Cold War: American Diplomats and Spies in Postwar Prague. Oxford University Press. Some comments here.

Randall Woods [2012]: Shadow Warrior: William Egan Colby and the CIA. Basic Civitas Books. Colby comes across as remarkably liberal, pragmatic and sensible in this account of his life, promoting agrarian socialism and grass-roots democracy to beat the communists in South Vietnam, for example.

James Button [2013]: Speechless: A Year in my Father’s Business. Melbourne University Press. A mention here.

Robert Dessaix [2012]: As I was Saying. Random House Australia. A typically erudite collection of talks and essays, as smooth as a gimlet.

Charles S. Maier [1999]: Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany. Princeton University Press.

Meredith Maran (Editor) [2013]: Why We Write. Plume.

Marci Shore [2013]: The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe. Crown Publishing Group, New York.

Thomas Nagel [2012]: Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. Oxford University Press USA. Any book so heavily criticized by Brian Leiter has to be of great value, and this was.

The photo shows the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, from 1954 home of the Berliner Ensemble.

With so many blogs being written by members of the literati, it’s not surprising that a widespread meme involves compiling lists of writers and books. I’ve even succumbed to it myself. Lists of mathematicians are not as common, so I thought I’d present a list of the 20th century greats. Some of these are famous for a small number of contributions, or for work which is only narrow, while others have had impacts across many parts of mathematics.

Each major area of mathematics represented here (eg, category theory, computer science) could equally do with its own list, which perhaps I’ll manage in due course. I’ve included David Hilbert, Felix Hausdorff and Bertrand Russell because their most influential works were published in the 20th century. Although Hilbert reached adulthood in the 19th century, his address to the 1900 International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris greatly influenced the research agenda of mathematicians for much of the 20th century, and his 1899 axiomatization of geometry (following the lead of Mario Pieri) influenced the century’s main style of doing mathematics. For most of the 20th century, mathematics was much more abstract and more general than it had been in the previous two centuries. This abstract style perhaps reached its zenith in the work of Bourbaki, Grothendieck, Eilenberg and Mac Lane, while the mathematics of Thurston, for example, was a throwback to the particularist, even perhaps anti-abstract, style of 19th century mathematics. And Perelman’s major contributions have been in this century, of course.

Here is a listing of visual artists whose work I like. Minimalists and geometric abstractionists are over-represented, relative to their population in the world. In due course, I will add posts about each of them.